'Male, pale, and stale': New report slams Australia's boardrooms

Australia's boardrooms are "male, pale, and stale" a report by the University of Sydney has found, with one foreign ASX 100 director claiming she was more likely to be asked for a recipe than for her opinion.

Up to 90 per cent of board positions are filled by Australians from Anglo-Celtic or European backgrounds, despite more than 20 per cent of Australians coming from non-European backgrounds.

The lack of female representation on Australia's boards came into sharp focus during the AMP scandal, when two of the companies female directors resigned, but the Australian Institute of Company Directors wants attention to also go back to the lack of cultural diversity at the top of the corporate ladder.

The University of Sydney Business School interviewed 18 ASX 100 board members and nine executive recruiters to deliver its Beyond the Pale report with the Australian Human Rights Commission and the AICD on Monday.

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One board member said it was a natural human instinct "to associate with people that look and feel and speak like us".

"We hang around with the crowd," the board member said. "That’s the pack mentality, and you know, the pack then tries to ostracise or destroy the outliers."

They experience "double jeopardy" through the combination of their gender and cultural background, the report found, as the supply of culturally diverse women is stunted at the executive level, making it difficult, if not impossible, to rise to the board level.

Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane said Australia was a "multi-cultural triumph" but there was a challenge to get board diversity right, not just on gender.

“We need to see more role models for diverse leadership in Australian society, because you can’t be what you can’t see," he said.